It still feels too early - it’s a bit of a shock to see the first hints of Christmas products creeping into supermarket aisles. But Christmas is now only 100 days away, which means that your time to plan for the holiday season, and the various lead-up events, is now.
To help with this, Facebook has announced a new set of holiday-themed ad options which will enable businesses to better present their holiday offerings, helping to boost performance in the busiest period.
First off, Facebook’s adding some new holiday-themed templates for their Dynamic Ad overlays, which will add an extra pop to your content.
Facebook first added in price and offer overlays for Dynamic Ads last year, helping to make your Dynamic Ads stand out.
Dynamic Ads, for those unaware, enable businesses to upload their product catalog and create campaigns which target certain products to specific audiences, based on chosen details or their browsing behavior and what they viewed on your site (or, alternatively, you can let Facebook automatically deliver the most relevant products to people).
The new presentation options add more creative flair - and definitely they look better. You can see, by comparing the two examples above, that the themed posts, with logos, snowflakes, etc., definitely stand out more and look more appealing.
The options provides a simple way to add a little extra to your promotions - they will be available to everyone, so there is a risk that they could become generic. But it's a worthy consideration either way.
Facebook's also adding in some new holiday-themed tools to its recently launched Video Creation Kit tools.
Facebook's Video Creation Kit enables users to create simple videos out of text and image assets.
Given the popularity of video content, it makes sense for brands to try out the Video Creation Kit tools to help boost their campaigns, and these new overlay options will provide additional flair, helping to make your video ads stand out.
You can read a full rundown of how the Video Creation Kit process works here.
And lastly, Facebook's providing some updates for its Collections ad units, which will connect them with Facebook's recently updated Canvas ad format (now called 'Instant Experience' ads).
Facebook launched its Collections ads last year - Collections combine video and product images to provide a kind of mini-website experience within Facebook.
Facebook's rolling out two updates to improve the option - first, as noted, Collections ads will now be able to direct shoppers from the Collections ad to an updated Instant Storefront template
"[Users] will have the option to automatically organize products from their catalog into more personalized groupings like “Suggested for You” and “Most Viewed” to boost engagement and conversions. Early testers of the new instant storefront template have seen increases in their conversion rate as high as 9%."
In addition, instead of having to upload your own videos into a Collection, advertisers using the Instant Storefront template will now be able to add an automatically generated video, which Facebook's system will create based on relevant product images and details chosen from your business’ catalog.
The option provides another way for advertisers to move into video content, without having to go to significant effort to film and edit themselves.
It's interesting to note the various ways Facebook's looking to help nudge advertisers towards video content. The approach makes sense - Facebook's working to develop its video offerings, particularly through Facebook Watch, and providing more ways for advertisers to participate in such will enable them to maximize the potential ad revenue, while also improving advertiser response.
And these new tools definitely look impressive - in essence, they're fairly simple additions, but they could have a big impact. Check them out as part of your holiday planning.
